New owner, same love of books for city shop

Thursday

TAUNTON — As a child, Eric Easterday discovered Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.”

After high school, he stumbled upon a not-quite-so-old man and his book store.

As a child, Eric Easterday discovered Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.”

After high school, he stumbled upon a not-quite-so-old man and his book store.

Reading more books and Readmore Books have changed his life.

As a recent high school graduate, Easterday, now 36, needed a job to help earn money for higher education.

“My mother started working here when I was about 11,” he said, from behind the counter of his newly acquired store. “When I got older, I needed to work my way through college.”

Easterday said he took the “scenic route” through both Bristol Community College and Bridgewater State College, eventually earning a bachelor’s degree in management after about seven years of study.

During those days and nights peddling new and used books, he grew comfortable crowded amid Readmore’s more than 100,000 volumes — not to mention another 100,000 books in storage.In his spare time, he started picking up the books he was selling. An avid outdoorsman, Hemingway’s fishing epic captured his imagination like nothing he had ever read before.

“It was appealing in the sense that there was this old man making a living from the ocean,” Easterday explained. “More than anything else, I’d like to be fishing. I love nature.”Instead, he spends his day awash in a sea of knowledge.

On May 1, Easterday took over full ownership of the 330 Winthrop St. store, finally crafting a deal with its 27-year owner, Jay Connerty.

Piled from floor to ceiling and wall to wall, crisp brand new editions and old weathered pre-read books share shelf after shelf.

A perusal of the shelves last week turned up a copy of “The Old Man and the Sea.”Its faded green and blue cover is missing a tiny corner.

Carrying with it a history of its own, the 1968 Scribner school paperback edition has many good years left. Every numbered page is accounted for, and the spine has survived nearly four decades of sporadic ownership.

For 30 cents (half the cover price), the famed literary classic was one lucky shopper’s for the taking.

Throughout the years, Easterday had been dropping hints to his book selling mentor, that he would like to own Readmore one day.

“Eric was always one of my better employees,” Connerty recalled. “He was always there when you needed him — attentive to all our customers.”

Now Connerty will call Easterday “boss.” He’ll stay on working at the store he helped build.Easterday lives in his childhood home, now with a family of his own — wife Kerrie, son Cameron, 5, and 2-year-old daughter Madelyn. A third baby is on the way — the stork due to arrive next month.

“He’s been pestering me since right out of college,” Connerty said of Easterday’s efforts to gain ownership of Readmore. “At first, I thought he was kidding. He kept telling me I was too old for the business, and that was way back in the 1990s. I just blew him off. I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.”

Back problems eventually convinced him otherwise, and finally, one day, he was ready to have a serious discussion about selling the store. Lifting boxes of books all day can be a back-wrenching endeavor.

“A year ago, Eric wrote me a very formal letter, and I was surprised,” Connerty recalled. “I said to myself, ‘Jeez, Eric’s serious about this.’ I started giving it some realistic thought, and he started to sell himself, the ideas and visions he had for the store’s future.”

Easterday is Readmore Book’s third owner, since the shop was founded in 1975. As in the past, he plans to keep the store focused on “customer-oriented, friendly service” unlike his bigger corporate competitors. If you need a book, he’ll find it. If it can’t be found amid his nearly 200,000 books, he’ll order it.